Gray Dawn, page 17
“There’s some weird divide.” I joined in to soothe his ego. “Magic is to blame, not your nose.”
“Makes sense to come at him from the air.” Derry tipped his head back. “Your dad is an excellent flier.”
The wing spell was a true work of art, which was why the director had bartered my promotion to deputy director in exchange for it. His envy of Dad’s talents knew no bounds, making it more ironic that our current strife with Luca and Calixta had been born from his desire to cement his legacy with a child of his bloodline. Only to discover he was unable to parent without a jealous heart.
All the heartaches, the betrayals, the children who never lived to inevitably disappoint him, had been for nothing.
“What’s that?” Derry, his vision sharper than mine, picked up his pace. “Is that…?”
Several yards away, a heap of clothing lay crumpled like a wad of paper that missed the wastebasket.
“Dad.” I left them behind and ran straight for him. “Hold on. I’m coming. Just hold on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ismacked into a clear barrier as hard as glass, bounced off it, and landed on my butt. Reaching out, I had a second to feel my way up the smooth edges of the containment spell before it hit me I was alone. I got to my feet, turned back the way I had come, and found Marita and Derry collapsed near where they first spotted Dad. Blay was curled on his side in the dirt not far from them, and Colby drooped in his hair.
As soon as I had ranged ahead of them, a spell must have caught them.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“You killed Bjorn Johansen.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I watched as the air beside Dad rippled like a fingertip poking a calm pond, and a familiar strawberry blonde emerged from behind an illusion spell so seamless I had to admire it.
Luca.
Reality shivered a second time, and the director joined her. He wore his company suit, leaned his weight on his cane, and stared off into the middle distance. His expression was serene, and that peaceful façade sat wrong on his features. The man was never happy, never content. He was always grasping, plotting, reaching for more, more, more. More power, more influence, more control.
“I did.” I got chills when the director didn’t so much as blink. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t dreamed of it for years.”
Luca bobbed a shoulder, as if to say fair is fair, but the director appeared to be off in his own little world.
“Do you know how many decades it took me to win Bjorn to my cause?”
A lick of ice swept down my spine, casting refracted images that showed me the last few months in a different light.
“Bjorn worked for you?” I couldn’t believe it. “Bjorn? Frost giant with an icicle up his butt? That Bjorn?”
“No one was closer to Albert. He was a necessary ally.”
“That’s how they escaped the explosion.” I finally understood how they had known the precise moment to flee. “You tipped off Bjorn, and he got them out of there.”
“All it took was Bjorn telling Albert your father had come for his head. Then he became very cooperative and more than willing to let Bjorn shepherd him out of harm’s way. He trusted Bjorn fully. That was his mistake. In thinking anyone bound into service against their will can ever be loyal. Time hadn’t dulled the edges of Bjorn’s hatred. It honed it to a razor’s edge. One all too willing to cut Albert’s throat given half a chance.”
“Let me guess. You gave him that.”
“Bjorn was a frost giant. A soldier. A conqueror. Your grandfather reduced him to a dancing monkey.”
“I, for one, never saw him dance. But it seems like you were pulling his strings just as hard.”
“All I had to do was set him free. The rest? He viewed it as a debt of honor I was happy to collect.”
“If Bjorn was working with you, why didn’t you snatch the director up in Florida?”
The frost giant had hidden the director away in a cabin on Lake Okeechobee, but we hadn’t seen signs of Luca.
“Albert was no use to me half dead. For what I have in mind, I wanted him hale and hearty.”
“You don’t think you’re going a tad overboard with your vendetta?” I kept a wary eye on the director, whose soulless gaze was giving me heebie-jeebies. “Why not kill him and be done with it?”
“Death is too quick, too easy. To destroy a person, you start at the top and work your way down. To the roots. You rip them out, burn them to ash, then salt the earth so that nothing will ever grow there again.”
“How thorough of you.”
“You came barreling after me to save your father,” she mused, “but not your grandfather.”
“You’re a smart woman.” I returned her earlier shrug. “You know the director’s not worth my tears.”
“He wasn’t always like this.” She swept her gaze over him. “He was kind, once. He loved me.”
“He loved what you could give him,” I corrected her, “right up until you couldn’t.”
Fae fertility rates were abysmal, and children were rare, but Luca had been born a Guardian of Ish’ran. Her god—also known as Earl—granted each of his guardians one female child in exchange for a single coupling with their counterpart, a Brother of E’rin’t. But the director had seduced Luca into bearing his children, and her god wasn’t happy about it. He refused to bless their union, and none of their children survived more than a handful of days. When it became clear she couldn’t give him the heirs he craved, he left her without looking back to pursue Calixta in the hopes of producing a daemon/black witch child.
“You spoke with Mother, I see.” She curled her upper lip. “I should have let the compound crush you.”
“Probably,” I agreed, checking on Blay from the corner of my eye. “Why didn’t you?”
“Your father bound me.” She looked puzzled. “He didn’t tell you?” She cocked her head. “I can’t lay a hand on you. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” She chuckled then. “Perhaps he can’t recall. His mind was a twisted spiral when I found him. All he did was weep for his wife and his daughter. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed with him. I was certain I had to be wrong. That he couldn’t have been the one child strong enough to have survived while my babies died in their cradles.”
“Love isn’t a weakness.”
“You didn’t used to believe that.” She flicked Blay a glance. “You might disbelieve it again in the future.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“I thought about adopting you.”
“What?” The abrupt change of topic made my head spin. “I did not hear you right.”
“You were a beautiful child. Talented. Malleable.” A gleam lit her eyes. “Desperate for love.”
Culture shock had been leaving a home with parents who lavished me with affection for the sterile manor and a grandfather I didn’t know, whose sole objective was to hammer me into a shape that pleased him.
“What stopped you? The story I killed my own parents with reckless juvenile magic?”
“I let myself imagine what it might be like, to raise you in my image.” Her smile turned cruel. “Then to show Albert the girl who had been meant as a reflection of him had turned into a mirror of me.” She exhaled. “But then I saw in you the same core of determination that had begun to wither in your father, and I accepted that you would become a casualty, the same as my children had been.”
“Plus, I’m a blood relative.” As much as it shamed me to admit it. “Your salting of the earth philosophy requires my death.”
“That too.” Her gaze slid to the director. “I don’t mind him, when he’s like this.”
“Under your thumb? A veritable zombie? A shell under your absolute control?”
“Yes,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing to slits.
“It sounds like you’re the one desperate for love.”
A bark of laughter twisted her features, draining them of any real amusement. “I don’t need love.”
“Says the woman who enslaved her former lover.”
“He’s the second most powerful witch alive,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “He will help me tear down the foundations of his legacy. He will bear witness to his own destruction. He will watch as I wipe his bloodline from the face of the Earth, destroying his hopes as he ruined mine.” Vindication gave her a dewy glow. “This time, I was more cautious. This time, I will succeed in bringing him to his knees.”
“This time?” I studied her. “This is your second attempt?” I don’t know why it popped in my head, unless I had been worrying it in the back of my mind since Mom became a vengeful spirit. “The Boo Brothers?”
“They taught me subtlety was lost on Albert,” she said darkly. “That a full-scale assault was the only hope I had of gaining and holding his attention.”
“How much of your treasure trove did you steal from Black Hat’s own vaults?”
Her cunning smile was answer enough, and her confession explained how she came into possession of a shard like the ones the Amherst siblings had used to conceal their black magic nature. It had been hers before she passed it on to the Boo Brothers in what must have been her inaugural attempt at taking down the Bureau.
A prickling sensation tingled down my nape, jarring a thought free that hadn’t occurred to me sooner.
The director had likely cast the spell that trapped Dad. Only a strong witch could have tricked him. But someone had cast the spell on the director, and it wasn’t her. She was fae. Her powers didn’t work that way, or she wouldn’t have had to fake her heritage to blend in with black witches. That meant she had one more accomplice nearby. One powerful enough, or familiar enough, to get close and cast a spell to rob the director of his autonomy before he could deflect the attack.
“Who else is here?” I kept my gaze locked on her. “You couldn’t have done this on your own.”
“An old friend.” A slow smile spread her red lips. “I believe you two know one another.”
Kenneth Cale, a black witch from the Lyonne coven out of Beverly, Massachusetts, appeared next to her. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him again. He was her current lover and the one responsible for the compulsion tattoo on Isiforos.
“No hard feelings, I hope.”
“None whatsoever.” I tipped my chin. “As soon as I kill you for what you did to Isiforos, we’re square.”
Chuckling, he summoned a foul wind that sent my hair swirling around my face, blinding me.
Before I could wipe my eyes clear, I hit my stomach, clipping my jaw on the ground, and spat dirt.
He had moved quicker than my eyes could track. No wonder he had gotten the drop on the director.
He drove an elbow into my spine, shocking a gasp out of me. As soon as his weight left me, I torqued my hips, flipping onto my back, but he stood a foot away. I couldn’t reach him. I had to lure him in. Only one way to do that, and it would hurt. A lot.
“Come a little closer,” I wheezed, locking my arms down at my sides, leaving my tender middle exposed. “Let’s see you laugh in my face.”
Without flinching, he kicked me in the gut and then in the chest before zipping back to a safe distance.
He was fast. I couldn’t do faster. But I could be prepared for his next strike.
Spitting blood, I wedged my elbows under me. “That all you got?”
With a smirk, he delivered a punishing kick to the underside of my jaw that left me seeing stars as my skull bounced off the ground. I didn’t have to fake my disorientation as I let my head loll and my eyes spin from the brute force of his attack. I breathed through clenched teeth, every inhale whistling as my aching ribs protested the motion.
Kenneth crouched to drink me in, the big bad director knocked on her butt, and couldn’t resist getting in a parting shot while I played possum. He fisted my hair, yanking me to him, putting us nose to nose.
Big mistake.
Only a matter of time before he made one.
He really shouldn’t have held on. I had him now. He was done.
Funneling magic to the point where our skin met, I sent him flying. His limbs seized on impact, jerking, and his facial muscles spasmed as his scream morphed into pathetic whimpers. His head tipped to one side, tears and drool wetting his cheeks. Eyelids twitching, he quit moving. Alive, based on the rise and fall of his chest, but probably wishing he wasn’t. I had hit him with the equivalent of a taser powered by a lightning strike.
An arched eyebrow was all the sympathy his predicament elicited from his lover.
“Hiding anyone else?” I breathed through the white-hot pain in my side. “Any other surprises?”
“Just this one.”
Dad rose from his limp sprawl with the same dead-eyed stare as the director.
Beside him stood…my mom.
Just as lost as he.
“One moment.” Luca stepped behind the director, murmured to Dad, and Dad bound his father’s wrists at his spine. He then cast a spell that brought life surging back into the director’s gaze. “There.”
As the director’s expression cleared, it darkened with the promise of retribution, but that was what brought us here. He wasn’t going to scrape together enough hate on the spot to beat Luca at her own game.
“How dare you?” The director gnashed his teeth at her. “Our business has long been done.”
“We’re done when I say we’re done.” Luca gripped his jaw in her hand and jerked his head toward me. “I want you to see this.” She snapped her fingers at the end of Dad’s nose. “Kill her.”
Manic laughter poured from the director as he watched the unfolding spectacle.
“You think I care about her?” He laughed louder. “Or him?”
Hard to keep an ear cocked to their conversation with Dad striding toward me with my death in his eyes.
“They are your legacy.” Luca, clearly put out by our dysfunctional family, forced him to watch. “Your line ends with them. Your only living child, and your only living grandchild, dead. You’ve already lost your compound, your fortress. Soon, you will lose the secrecy shrouding our world from humans, and with it, any leverage to rebuild your precious Bureau. The new world will have no need for the old rules, or for those who enforce them. You’re no better than a common thug selling protection to those who only need to be kept safe from you.”
“You don’t have to do this.” His jaw flexed with the effort of civility. “We can start over.” He softened his gaze on her with such precision it was clear to me—if not to her—he had plenty of practice. “Together.”
To make sure he didn’t escape this unscathed, I reminded her, “He left you.”
Mom drifted behind Dad like a shadow. She didn’t blink or talk. She simply existed next to him.
As much as I hated that she was, yet again, reduced to a pawn, I was grateful she wasn’t fighting me.
A few feet away, Dad drew his wand, cocked his arm, and flung a spell at me.
I yelped as I dodged the blast, having forgotten he was able to lob power without the book.
I could almost hear the Maudit Grimoire’s seductive whisper.
Use me. Bond with me. Be mine, and I’ll always be yours.
“No,” I growled under my breath. “You don’t get to win. You don’t get to take up space in my head, book. Not anymore. I’m done with doubting myself, and I’m done with you.”
Wielding his wand like a blade, Dad sliced through the air above me.
I dodged his swing. Okay. Fine. I tripped and stumbled out of his way.
Not fast enough.
A hank of my hair drifted past the end of my nose where the blade of magic had caught it.
Dad advanced on me, cutting off my escape with blasts of power that herded me where he wanted me. I led him farther from Blay and Colby, and the Mayhews, trying to protect them, but he was too fast. I couldn’t touch him to cast on him, and the only way that would change was if…
No.
No, no, no.
The Hunk was not an option. The Maudit Grimoire was not a savior. They couldn’t do this for me.
I had to save myself.
A blue streak dried the spit from my mouth as Mom broke from her stasis.
This was about to get ugly.
Summoning my wings, I prepared for takeoff, but suddenly she was there.
Right in front of me.
What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
Hurt one, I hurt the other. Kill one, I killed them both.
How did we all get out of this alive?
“Circle back, baby.” Her eyes were wide…and clear. Had she been playing along? Did that mean Dad was okay too? I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t afford to guess wrong. “Run toward Luca.”
“Mom?”
The second of connection came and went too fast for me to second-guess her. I did what she told me. I spun on my heel, praying this wasn’t a trick. I aimed for Luca, bobbing and weaving to obscure the method to my madness.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I muttered to myself, evading Mom as she herded me with feints.
As we drew closer to Luca, she shifted her weight, eyeing us with burgeoning concern.
Beside her, the director had begun to smile, and it was an ugly thing.
Sharp. Predatory. Knowing.
Just before I would have bowled Luca over, I cut left. But Dad kept going. He collided with her, knocking her back, and he rode her down. He landed on top of her, and quicker than she could order the director to help, he drew his athame and stabbed her through the heart.
“This…isn’t…over…” Her lips trembled. “The humans…”
Blood slid from one corner of her mouth, and her body trembled with her struggle to hold on to life.
“Allow me to return to my post,” the director said to Dad, a gleam in his eyes. “I can set things back to rights. All can be as it was before.”
The way he didn’t look at Luca, even for a second, made me furious for his role in this all over again. That disregard of her, of her feelings, had led us here. His heartlessness had cost countless innocent lives, and he had the nerve to ask us to raise him back to a position of power.
